MARBLEHEAD — If you are looking for a good summer beach read, award-winning Marblehead author Eric Jay Dolin has an exciting New York Times bestseller out now about getting shipwrecked on a far distant shore.
In “The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail,” Dolin spins a true tragic tale about the fate of 22 men and boys of the New Bedford whaleship Mentor after it struck a reef and sank off of the Palau archipelago in the western Pacific in 1832.
The latest book by the author of “Leviathan,” “Left for Dead,” and “Black Flags, Blue Waters” is now on its second printing, he said.
Dolin not only weaves a gripping tale of survival and tragedy, he also gives you the background as to what life was like on a whaling vessel, a primer on the flora and fauna of Palau, and the political tensions among various native tribes and villages without drowning you in too much detail.
Reading the book gives you the feeling of being on the islands. Dolin, 64, did not travel to Palau to write the book, but it was well received by Palauans who read it, he said.
He sent a copy to Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr., who Dolin said responded with a note, thanking him for sending it.
The president wrote that he read Dolin’s book while traveling to England, where he had a chance to discuss part of the book with King Charles, specifically the section relating to a British shipwreck in Palau. Dolin said Whipps ended his note saying, “I want to thank you for all the amazing research you did to bring this story to print. We hope that you come and visit us in Palau … I do hope that someday this book is turned into a movie.”
Dolin, who is Jewish, was born in Queens, and his family moved to Long Island and later to Stamford, Connecticut. His parents were not terribly religious, but he had his Bar Mitzvah at Temple Sinai in Stamford.
“I’ve always identified very strongly with my Jewish roots although I can’t say I’m particularly religious,” Dolin said.
When asked about his Irishsounding last name, Dolin said it was formerly “Dolinsky” when his grandparents came to the U.S. from Kiev and Poland around the late 1800s and early 1900s.
When his father and uncle enlisted in World War II, Dolin’s uncle felt the name Dolinsky was too ethnic for the military, so he convinced Dolin’s father to go to a judge to legally change their names.
Dolin and his wife, Jennifer Rooks Dolin, have two grown children: Harry, 26, a cybersecurity analyst who lives in Cambridge; and Lily, 29, a literary agent who lives in New York City.
Dolin has always been fascinated by the ocean.
“When I was a kid, I wanted to be Jacques Cousteau,” he said. “I was really into marine biology.” He was a serious seashell collector in high school and wanted to become a seashell scientist, known as a malacologist.
At Brown University, he realized he was not interested in hard sciences and lab work, so he double-majored in biology and environmental policy. He earned a master’s degree in environmental management from Yale.
Halfway through his Ph.D. at MIT, he decided he did not want to teach. He finished the program, anyway, and worked for about 10 years doing environmental work, all while writing on the side.
In the late 1990s, he told his wife he wanted to become a full-time writer, and she agreed, partly because of a writer in her own family. Her grandfather, Harry Kemelman, was the author of the highly acclaimed, 11-book Rabbi Small murder mystery series.
Dolin took writing jobs, including a stint writing accident reports for the marine division of the National Transportation Safety Board.
When the family moved to the North Shore, Dolin took a job as a fisheries policy analyst at the National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, in Gloucester. He did so even though he had no background in fishery management.
About five years later, after publishing “Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America” in 2007, the couple had saved enough that Dolin could quit his job and become a full-time writer. He could not have done this without the support of his wife of 32 years, he said.
“Writing is the best job and the hardest job I’ve ever had,” Dolin said.
Now he’s an author of 17 books, most of them about the ocean. He came across the story of the Mentor around 2005-2006 while writing “Leviathan.” But the narrative did not fit this book.
The story of the Mentor had been popular in the late 1830s, thanks in part to numerous articles and books, including an 1836 book written by Mentor crewman and survivor Horace Holden. However, the story of the Mentor faded over time.
In 2024, Dolin wrote “Left for Dead,” featuring a tale of shipwreck and survival on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812. This story reminded him of the story about the Mentor.
“The story of the wreck of the Mentor is one of the most fascinating, repulsive and dramatic maritime tales that I ever encountered, so I thought it would make a good book,” he said during a talk at the Sawyer Free Library in Gloucester on July 16. Θ
To learn more about Dolin, go to ericjaydolin.com.
